Mass Shooting Reported at Madden Video Game Tournament in Florida (polygon.com) 1293
Multiple people on live streams and social media reported a mass shooting at a Madden NFL 19 tournament in Jacksonville, Florida, this morning. The Jacksonville County Sheriff's Office confirmed that law enforcement was en route to the scene but had no further information early this afternoon. From a report: In the video, two competitors are playing when someone starts screaming off camera. As the first of nine shots break out, they abandon their stations and others are heard fleeing. Then a man is heard crying out, "What did he shoot me with?" Three more shots are fired and screaming can be heard. This weekend at Jacksonville Landing downtown was the first of four qualifier events for the Madden Classic series sponsored by EA Sports. CNN: "Multiple fatalities at the scene, many transported. #TheLandingMassShooting," according to Jacksonville Sheriff's twitter page, which urged people to "stay far away from the area" as the area is not safe at this time. "One suspect is dead at the scene, unknown at this time if we have a second suspect. Searches are being conducted," according to another tweet from the sheriff's office In a statement issued moments ago, EA Sports Madden NFL said, "This is a horrible situation, and our deepest sympathies go out to all involved."
Top competitor Drini Gjoka, who was at the event and reported the terrifying scene, said, "The tourney just got shot up. Im leavinng and never coming back. I am literally so lucky. The bullet hit my thumb. I will never take anything for granted ever again. Life can be cut short in a second.
Update: LA Times reports that the shooter was a gamer who was competing in the tournament and lost, according to Steven "Steveyj" Javaruski, one of the competitors.
Top competitor Drini Gjoka, who was at the event and reported the terrifying scene, said, "The tourney just got shot up. Im leavinng and never coming back. I am literally so lucky. The bullet hit my thumb. I will never take anything for granted ever again. Life can be cut short in a second.
Update: LA Times reports that the shooter was a gamer who was competing in the tournament and lost, according to Steven "Steveyj" Javaruski, one of the competitors.
Two things... (Score:5, Funny)
From TFA:
Update: The Los Angeles Times reports that the suspect was a competitor at the tournament who had lost.
Also, there seems to be a problem with Florida. Maybe we should build a wall around there?
Re:Two things... (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike many States, most people in Florida were born somewhere else. Putting up a wall would obviously improve that situation for Florida but now we'd be stuck with the people who otherwise would have moved there. Just look at the news! We should be thanking Florida for being appealing to these people.
The NRA has been saying... (Score:5, Funny)
What kids need (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Kids should be taught to have a conscience.
2) Kids should be taught self-control. (If you're angry, then count to 10 or 100 before you say anything. If you're losing control, then walk away so you don't hurt someone.)
3) Kids need to see their parents acting ethically, and using self-control, as a good example.
4) Kids should be taught that if you lose a game or a job or a girlfriend etc., then it's not the end of the world. Young people need to be told that; they haven't lived long enough to experience loss and recovery from loss.
When they're extremely upset over something transient, they should be told, "A year from now, this won't matter. Five years from now, you won't even remember it. If you can't see this, then just trust me on this one." That's what my parents told me, and they were right. I remember them reassuring me with these words, but I don't remember what I was so upset about.
5) I wonder if shooters like this grew up surrounded by crowding and/or constant loud music. I can't imagine a kid who plays on swings, makes forts out of snow or cardboard boxes, and lies on his back looking at clouds, growing up to be a killer.
Re:What kids need (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't imagine a kid who plays on swings, makes forts out of snow or cardboard boxes, and lies on his back looking at clouds, growing up to be a killer.
I can. Rural environments, or at lest smaller communities, generally have higher cases of murder per person. (FYI, I am from northern BC, Canada.) And it is different from large cities where murder is often gang related and motivated by profit. In those small farming communities you get crime motivated by pure evil. Like the serial killer pig farmer in Abbotsford and whoever is killing the female hitchhikers along highway 16. I can not believe that having limited contact with people when growing up is a good thing. Some people are just broken. It is difficult to discover this fact and manage it when a child is growing up with limited human interaction.
Someone should do a study to see how many of these shooters are an only child. In my experience, kids from large families are more balanced - I assume because of all the shit they went through growing up they learned to deal with their emotions. But I also know a guy from Alaska who didn't see another non-family human for the first 6 years of his life. He turned out great so who knows...
Re:What kids need (Score:4, Informative)
5) I wonder if shooters like this grew up surrounded by crowding and/or constant loud music. I can't imagine a kid who plays on swings, makes forts out of snow or cardboard boxes, and lies on his back looking at clouds, growing up to be a killer.
Right. [wikipedia.org]
That escalated quickly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Guns don't cause violence, but they do escalate it once someone decides to go that route.
It is notable that Brazil has strict gun control laws, which it actually enforces [bloomberg.com], yet it has a murder rate per capita that is ten times that of the U.S. It also has a major problem with "leaked" guns -- many of which are coming from the police. Clearly the cause of their problem is systemic, but maybe ours is too.
Re: (Score:3)
Narcissistic Injury (Score:3)
This is a good example of what happens when an entitled disordered personality gets their hands on a weapon and perceives a slight against their egoic self. Since their own internal dialogue is already oriented around complete self destruction the best way for them to commit suicide is to get the police to do it for them, whilst taking those who inflicted the perceived injury with them.
This is because if they were to just commit suicide there would be no notoriety and attention from their actions. I counted the discharges and it sounded like a hand gun with a nine round magazine, a reload with a fresh magazine, then another 3 shots. More than likely the shooter pre-meditated a variety of scenarios where this *could* occur otherwise why bring a loaded firearm with a spare magazine? I doubt it was a rifle of some description.
This is the danger of Narcissistic Personality Disorder when it is hovering just below the the threshold of becoming Anti-social Personality Disorder. Those people walk around life always looking for ways to create destruction for everyone and looking at this guys eyes and face in the picture he just reeks of someone who can't sleep at night because his own unconscious self is barraging him with thoughts of what a loser he is. More so look at the facial expression of the Bills player - this is someone with enough social intelligence to pick up that there is something wrong with this kid. I know this is after the fact however it is possible to tell all this from a photo.
So when he lost at the one thing where he thought it was his domain, it pushed him over the edge he knew he was precariously resting on. The thing you can't obviously see is he was looking for a scenario to generate the worst possible outcome so that a notorious death was the one thing he could do so that people would pay attention, after all killing himself means nothing, killing others in the process confirms his own self destructive nature.
How do I see this? I have been writing a book on this subject because it is a common problem that generally only manifests as psychological abuse. At 24 he didn't have enough social experience to defend himself from the perception of the abuse repeated from his childhood nor the impulse control to stop his own destructive nature manifesting.
Yes, you can blame the parents too. At least one was abusive and the other enabled the abuse, possibly tried to compensate and they projected their own toxicity into this kid, from which they will draw their own supply for the rest of their lives. I'm going to predict, he was probably a quiet kid, didn't make much trouble, no one really noticed him. Never had a criminal record, no history of violence, very few friends, probably all on line.
This, I feel, is the core issue with the weapons violence in the US, it is a manifestation of mental health issues like these. Start fixing the mental health issues and you will see a reduction in gun violence.
Statistics (Score:3)
So for over a decade there has been the argument that violent video games make people more violent. And tons of arguments for or against. However, I want to use existing arguments to point out something equally stupid; if you do not mind. Yes, I am hijacking this thread.
For over 7 decades the US government and the DEA have been calling cannabis a 'Gateway drug'. Why? Not because of any scientific research, but pure statistics.
An overwhelming majority of heavy users of drugs like heroin, admit to using 'marijuana' at some point in time. So these people jumped to the conclusion that cannabis is a gateway drug. Following that logic, why isnt alcohol, cigarettes, or coffee also a gateway drug because 100% of heroin users also used these as well.
So lets use this same, already government sanctioned, presence. If 100% of these mass shooters also admitted to playing video games, should we label video games as a 'gateway' to mass shooting? the precedence is definitely there.
Pointing the finger (Score:5, Insightful)
This gun debate is getting really old, and it's never going to be "won" by either side. Just like abortion, women/gay/minority rights. It all just gets recycled into one big round after another. Talking heads will use majority opinion to get elected on these issues for years to come... ..Unless human beings wake tf up and realize they are responsible for their own actions. Period. It's not a "fair" world out there, there are plenty of crazies and just plain evil people out there that want to do harm (I would mostly gather because great harm had been done to them at some point in the past). So you have to be able to defend yourself. But the point is to raise as many children up to be ethical and respectful people.
TL;DR: Respect is what's missing.
Re: (Score:3)
This gun debate is getting really old, and it's never going to be "won" by either side.
No it has well and truly been won by the people in countries which have been living fine for many years mass shooting free since the government took our guns. At this point most of us are just laughing at the other "It is my second amendment right to die senselessly" side.
Diagnosis (Score:3)
A lot of people seem to have some extreme anger issues.
Once they're raging, things can go stupid quickly. Doesn't even require a gun.
As an example, drive on our freeways from time to time and watch how stupid people can be once the anger takes over.
I think that's what sets America apart from the rest of the world. We're very quick tempered over minor stupid shit. The overall attitude is just angry.
You may / may not agree with me but if you spend six months or more away from the US, it will be one of the first things you notice when you get back.
Re:Can we finally admit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we finally admit that video games do, in fact, mess with young people's minds and make them more violent?
I don't know about that, but I think we ought to be able to agree that video games are not a substitute for parenting.
Re:Can we finally admit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good grief. The problem is mentally unstable people that parents, schools, and the judicial system seem to have no idea what to do with. A guy like this just doesn't suddenly get beat at a video game and at that moment start firing his gun at people. This is somebody who almost certainly has a long history of aggression issues. And honestly, what is the answer? Yes, the availability of guns in the US makes the likelihood of a gun as the weapon of choice go up, but the vehicle attacks that have happened all over the world demonstrate that someone sufficiently demented will find a way to kill and maim lots of people. Better mental health services is a start, but whether your country allows easy access to guns or doesn't (and some countries do and some countries don't), there's just a risk to being alive, that some nutcase is going to decide one day to go out killing, and, while statistically very unlikely, it is possible you may become a target.
The fact is that despite the wider trauma that goes along with a mass shooting (whether this kind of spree killer or gang violence), most murder victims knew their attacker. I find it akin to the kind of hysteria that goes along with, say, serial child rapists, very scary, but the fact is that the overwhelming majority of children subjected to sexual abuse are abused by a family member or a family friend or someone else close to them. In either case, something as mundane as a husband killing his wife or a child sexually abused by an uncle doesn't really make the news, and certainly not the national news, and yet those are the situations where violence is most prevalent. It's just that our monkey brains are actually rather poor at prioritizing risk. We'll freak out about the risks of terrorism or airplane crashes, when you're statistically far more likely to choke to death or slip in your bathtub, or really, to die of heart disease, but those aren't sexy enough stories to sell advertising.
Re: (Score:3)
That's only true for small parts of Sub Saharan Africa ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]) and suggesting differences in ethnicity are on the same level as the differences between the two sexes is what's "silly" around here.
Re: Can we finally admit? (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to the violence in European football? The ones we hear about every single year, including where a certain group has said women should be barred [washingtonpost.com] from the first few rows of a game?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
[Citation needed]
Did you forget that Chris Kyle wasn't the only person killed there? His friend Chad Littlefield was shot 7 times.
Afterwards the killer left and drove to his sisters house where he confessed, and she called 911 to report what he had done.
Are you suggesting that all of those '2nd Amendment activists who were all responsible gun owners' who surrounded him simply... froze, and didn't attempt to engage the killer... or call 911?
Being armed doesn't guarantee you are going to be successful in defending your life, however it does significantly increase the odds.
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, going totally bonkers because you lost at Madden NFL? C'mon, guys, we don't really have to have that sort of thing.
Obvious solution: EVERYONE who plays Madden NFL at tournament levels should be locked up, to proactively prevent this sort of thing.
Or, alternately, we just make losing Madden NFL illegal. No losers, noone going postal for losing, Everyone wins, everyone is happy, right?
On a rather more serious note, the bozo doing the shooting killed himself. A bit of an overreaction to losing a game, even without the shooting other people part....
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Informative)
Was this a gun free zone?
The property's rules of conduct [jacksonvillelanding.com] prohibit carrying weapons of any kind other than by law enforcement. If it's like most places, it would also have lots of copiously posted signs to that effect.
Someone intending to shoot up the place would, of course, just chuckle on the way past the signs. Law-abiding people, on the other hand, would follow the rules, leaving the only civilian guns on the premises in the hands of the criminals.
If it was gun free, how did he get a gun in there?
Because, of course, guns don't just magically disintegrate when entering a "gun free zone."
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're missing the point of a gun free zone. People are not retarded and think that it magically creates a place that guns can never enter (I'm fairly certain the above poster was being sarcastic and you didn't get the joke). Gun free zones exist so that the second a gun is noticed the cops can be called. There's no delays wondering about the person's motives are because they are breaking the law just by having a gun in that place.
It also creates an environment where people don't have to feel intimated by others (good business sense for a restaurant). Let me tell you from personal experience there's nothing like being in an open carry state, having a minor disagreement with some one and having them draw attention to the fact that they are carrying a gun in that context.
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
(I'm fairly certain the above poster was being sarcastic and you didn't get the joke).
I'm fairly certain you didn't read his follow-up post, nor take note of his handle. He's one of the most prolific flaming-liberal-America-sucks posters around here.
Gun free zones exist so that the second a gun is noticed the cops can be called.
Oh, phenomenal. That buys you a whole 2.7 seconds before you would have called the police anyway after the first round was fired. That's definitely worth the tradeoff of the shooter being able to freely plug away at fish in a barrel until the cops show up.
Re: (Score:3)
Anyone with a basic machine shop can make just about any sort of firearm they want.
There are no countries which have banned firearms which don't have any firearms at all as a result.
You can't stop people from getting a gun if they want one. You can only make it more difficult. Unfortunately, the side effect of any of the proposed ways of making it more difficult for someone who will misuse a gun to get one is that you make things more difficult on 99 other law-abiding people with an inherent right recognize
Re: (Score:3)
There ought to be a law that says a business, if open to the public, can decide to outlaw firearms on their property, BUT they must also keep sufficient security on-hand to deal with any threats. As an example, most sports venues do this. If an incident occurs on the premises without security to deal with it, then the owner is jointly responsible for any damage, up-to and including wrongful death.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What the fuck is wrong with you people?
I’m American, and I wonder the same thing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We keep letting just any two morons make a baby anytime they want and then we hold them the loosest of standards on how to raise it. Then, as it grows, it learns how unique and special it is and gets trophies for coming in last place, while mommy and daddy make sure its grades are adjusted after they threaten the teachers and schools for failing their unique snowflake. It never learns how to deal with actual, real life and all the disappointment and frustration life brings and then shoots the place up wh
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that one, the (draw mohammed/shoot jihadists) contest.
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's bullshit and you know it. The Texas church shooter had already done his deed and was fleeing the scene when the citizen intervened. Also, the citizen's choice of weapon had squat to do with ultimately stopping his escape. But - Hey! Keep living that Rambo fantasy!
1. He was heading to another target to shoot more people.
2. He was wearing body armor and the citizen with the AR-15 recognized that the type of armor he was wearing doesn't cover the sides. He specifically aimed at his sides for this reason. While behind a truck at a reasonably long distance. Yes, the choice of weapon made a big difference.
Re: (Score:3)
Attempting to disarm the public means discarding the natural advantage of good people outnumbering bad people.
But it also discards the natural disadvantage of stupid people naturally outumbering everyone else. If absolutely everyone was packing, you'd get a bunch of ewll-meaning dumbasses engaging in spray and pray trying to hit the bad guy and making things much worse.
If you don't think that will happen then you have much higher faith in humanity than I do.
It also means that you disarm law-abiding citizens
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:4, Informative)
i assume you live somewhere that guns are not prevalent. This is nowhere near an accurate assumption. Most of those wild-west gun-slinging idiots you describe, turn out to be felons.
"So how come you also get mass shootings in Texas?"
doesnt it say something to you that all these mass shootings take place in a place that is either 'strickly gun free' or a place where nobody would think they needed to carry one (church)?
Ive had a CCDW issued to me since 2000. Since that first church (the predominantly black one) got shot up in NC(SC?) I have started carrying even at times when I have no reason to suspect needing one. This means even to the gym using equipment. Its a shitty world we live in that even the taboo of killing 'in the house of god' doesn't scare people enough to wait until another time. Ever since that shooting I have been carrying something damn near everywhere I go. I do train, regularly. The idea of collateral damage is not lost on me. However, there is a very effective method of target acquisition that nearly eliminates this. Im guessing you didnt know that since you envision people just firing randomly like in the movies.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Informative)
The USA has more guns than most countries, and yet still manage fewer homicides than countries with fewer guns and stricter gun laws.
*Citation Required.
As far as I can see that's mostly bullshit, if you're comparing apples with apples.
Check this graph out. [worldbank.org]
I added the US and compared with your rate per 100,000 people with a couple of rich countries and a couple of random other countries.
US rate = 4.9 (2015)
UK = 0.9
All High Income countries = 2.4
Feel free to have a play, I mean you might like to compare yourselves with Somalia or whatever.
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:4, Informative)
The USA has more guns than most countries, and yet still manage fewer homicides than countries with fewer guns and stricter gun laws.
Nope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
our heroin overdose rate is nearly 10x the gun death rate now. In fact if you rule out suicide (lets face it, take the gun away, they still kill themselves) we have other, enormous death problems we gloss over. The overdose rate from opiates is greater than driving related deaths, and homicides (all of them) combined. We debate gun laws forever, nobody gives a fuck about the people dying from opiates. Its no longer a case of drifter junkies 'making a choice'. I have seen too many normal people get sucked in
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
so instead of targeting guns, maybe we should get to the bottom of whats driving homicide. Banning sudafed sure as fuck didnt stop the use of meth. All it did was make it a real PITA for me when I actually need the shit. I have to get my ass to a pharacist between the hours of 9am and 8pm. If something comes up outside this time I have to deal with the problem until then.
Its time to dig deeper and ignore the tool. Take guns away and IED's will just rise in their place just like israel. Its like getting rid of spiders in your house. You cant spray for them because they walk above the poison. Kill the other bugs and the spiders will die off all on their own. Banning guns based on statistics would easily justify revoking drivers licenses and mandating public transportation due to the massive amount of traffic deaths every year. In the end its still just another tool. Something has changed in the last 30 years that makes people massively more likely to commit homicide than in previous decades. It certainly is not proliferation of firearms. I the 70s and 80s you could go into a gun store and there would be an AR15, and an M16 side by side. The difference was the M16 required a $200 tax stamp and you waited a few weeks to get approved. That was a _real_ assault rifle. How is it in the 70s anybody could buy every form of weapon, including fully automatic, and the homicide rate is much higher now than its ever been; despite decades of gun control laws.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:4, Informative)
"Your motives for disarming the public have nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with establishing a totalitarian society. "
Oh Jesus Christ, now you're just going over the deep end. Virtually all of the rest of the first world has stricter gun control laws then us and still have vibrant, open democracies with regular crime rates at roughly the same level as ours. There is a very obvious solution to our high homicide and gun violence rates sitting right in front of us in almost every other first world nation. Meanwhile, no one currently has any good ideas on how to solve the opiate problem our country is having.
You're just being stupid and choosing to demonize some one with claims that you have zero supporting evidence for. At this point if all you have is deflection and name calling I'm wasting my time talking to you.
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in a country with pretty strict gun control. The criminals still have guns.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
hmm maybe, if the ATF, in 2009, did not embark in a clever 'sting' operation that successfully sold millions of guns to the cartels. Only that 'sting' operation turned out to be a case of our law enforcement getting played for chumps and losing all those weapons.
BTW another source of bad guys getting guns.... they buy them from dirty cops. No other theft required.
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Informative)
You never hear about mass shootings in Texas
Oh really [go.com]? Never hear about them [washingtonpost.com]?
I guess this list [texasobserver.org] is bogus. No mass shootings [cbsnews.com] you say? Perhaps you're not looking [star-telegram.com] hard enough.
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can guarantee that this happened in a "gun free zone." These shootings always do. You never hear about mass shootings in Texas or other places that allow open carry. The just don't happen. It's almost like an armed populace is a safe populace.
According to the update, the shooter was a competitor who lost. That doesn't sound premeditated: instead it sounds like someone who happened to carry a gun when he flipped out took recourse to the gun.
So this was a case where exactly the case of "an armed populace" was what enabled a guy losing a game to turn into a mass shooter. In Europe, you'd have gotten a few broken noses and a guy under arrest and on line for medical costs.
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
They redefined 'mass shooting' about 3 years ago. It's much 'worse' since then.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:5, Informative)
Are you delusional or what ? I live in Europe and I can walk safely anywhere without fearing to be shot by some random asshat.
I live in the United States and also walk safely anywhere without fear of getting shot. Been walking around for fifty-something years and never seen anyone pull out a gun in public.
I can see how it might appear that we are all armed to the teeth and taking potshots at each other if all you have to go by are the news stories. Personally I don't own a gun simply because I don't want or need one and I'm certainly not fearful. Fearsome, one might argue, but that's another story.
Re: (Score:3)
Breaks down to 14.8 for poison and drug overdoses, 11.7 for m
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, we have strict gun regulations by the way...
You also have strict truck regulations and strict knife regulations, which haven't helped either.
The problem is that Europe has terrorist insurgents and the US has lots of untreated crazy people.
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you trying to pretend this isn't a "gun-related" mass shooting and instead is "videogame-related"? They don't have mass shootings (or even many shootings) in Korea. Not sure what you were going for there.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are people seriously thinking we can ban all guns in the US, even handguns?
Actually, I forecast, that since this shooting didn't involve a scary AR type rifle...that this even will drop off the news rather quickly like the last few shootings that involved shotguns, or hand guns, since those don't fit within the Anti-Gun's arguments about "full semi-auto" rifles...or "assault" rifles like the AR and its ilk.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:4, Informative)
And, of course, the place where they competition was held was a "gun free zone". As is standard with mass shootings (all but 1?). So, guns were already illegal where the shooting happened.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: BAN BUMP STOCKS... apk (Score:4)
...if that. Obtaining parts that modify guns into full auto, or modifying them by yourself isn't all that hard, and if you're going to do a mass shooting you don't really care about legality of what you do. The bump stocks are an easily accessible, half-assed solution that requires holding the gun just right so that it shoots like full auto, and not as firmly as with real full auto - resulting in accuracy going to shit. Without bump stocks the shooters would quite likely seek out genuine full auto - and that would result in more people injured or killed.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:5, Informative)
You should get beyond your 1st or 2nd grade education and move straight to a basic civics class. The 2nd amendment is already a limited right in our country. It can't be fully revoked, but it can be limited - and it is.
Socialism = drinking water, interstate highways, college tuition assistance programs. You know, scary stuff you have to fear rather than allow yourself to think about, being a Republican. No thinking allowed! FEAR it.
Re:Yeah, no need to fear Lenin at all... davai cea (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice, can't beat'em so call them Russian. A sure sign of a strong intellect.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:5, Informative)
Bernie Sanders understands the concept very well, he has deliberately chosen to use the term "socialism" for his particular US-centred vision of social democracy in order to provoke. It's a regrettable terminological choice that would only work in the US where few have a clue about these terms. Socialism and social democracy have nothing to do with each other, in fact quite a few social democrats were put into Gulags by socialists and communists, as well as into concentration camps and prisons by the Nazis.
What you call social liberalism is something else, there is a left-wing tradition of liberalism since Adam Smith addressed the Social Question of the 19th Century.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:3, Insightful)
According to a new poll on citizen security in 135 countries, Venezuelans are the least likely people in the world to feel safe walking alone at night.
The Gallup 2017 Global Law and Order Index found that just 12 percent of Venezuelans felt safe walking after sundown and only 14 percent expressed confidence in their police.
In addition, 38 percent of Venezuelans said they had been robbed in the last year, putting it in sixth place worldwide behind five countries, all in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Observatory of
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
Great place. Good thing they banned guns. Keep up the good work, Hugo!
USA: Safer than Venezuela!
I love how you compare the USA to poor conutries with massive problems (as opposed to dirst world nations) then conclude that the main cause for difference is the laws on guns.
As opposed to you know the massive piles of everything else.
What next? The US has way fewer people murdered by the state than North Korea. Must be because NK has strict gun control. I can't see any oter reason and if you ban guns you'll be just like NK.
Seriously though if you actually like your conutry can you please raise the bar a little higher than you currently have it?
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:5, Funny)
The average Venezuelan has lost 32 lbs in the last two years.
Sounds like a bit of socialism would be healthy for the US...
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:5, Funny)
The obvious answer, since speech and guns are both protected rights, is to ban football.
We can't ban football games, because speech, but we can ban the actual game, and then in 50 years nobody will be interested in it enough to want to play Madden online, and there will never be another shooting exactly like this one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
America; where not being a total douchebag to other people is called "socialism" and is a bad thing.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation: "hurt durr REAL socialism has never been tried!!1!1!1"
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thing is, "real capitalism" has been tried. And it leads to hellholes that are even worse than Maoist China.
A good measure of "real capitalism" is the Ease of Doing Business Index [wikipedia.org] which measures capitalist principles and the amount of government interference in starting and running a business.
Here are the top 10 for 2018:
1. New Zealand
2. Singapore
3. Denmark
4. South Korea
5. Hong Kong
6. United States of America
7. United Kingdom
8. Norway
9. Georgia
10. Sweden
Here are the bottom 10, which lack basic capitalist qualities of property rights, efficient enforcement of contracts, rule of law, and fair regulations:
Haiti
Congo
Afghanistan
Central African Republic
Libya
Yemen
South Sudan
Venezuela
Eritrea
Somalia
Which are the hellholes?
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
Free for all anything is anarchy, Einstein.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
No shit sherlock.
First you said "real capitalism has been tried. And it leads to hellholes that are even worse than Maoist China". Then you said "free-for-all capitalism is just another name for anarchy". The place you fucked up is when you assumed that it's the capitalism part of " free-for-all capitalism" which leads to anarchy, rather than the free-for-all part.
You basically said "anarchism and capitalism leads to anarchy" and then tried to pretend that capitalism is the problem. What do you do for an encore? "Ice cream is bad because poisoned ice cream will kill you"?
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:3)
Uhm, you do realize the right in the US constantly request free for all capitalism, right?
No, that's just another one of your silly misapprehensions.
There's a constant stream of "we don't need regulation" and "the government needs to stop interfering"
There's essentially nobody anywhere near the mainstream "right" who argues for zero regulation, so you're just flat out wrong. Even Friedman argued that regulation was needed in some rare situations. Zero regulation is more a position of the Libertarian party, and even there it's not a universally held opinion.
Even those who do argue for zero regulation are arguing for zero regulation of economic activity by a central government. That is not a "f
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus H. C., man - you have no idea with the meaning of the word regulated means
as it was used in the period that the Amendments were written. That entire line is what
we would call (in today's language) the "duh" line, iows, its meaning was clear and
obvious to the people at the time. A Militia without the right to bear arms is not a Militia;
the two concepts are inseparable. It has nothing to do with laws or "regulation."
It's not the right to bear arms, it's the right for a Militia to legally exist that is spelled out
by the amendment. And a Militia is an "ensemble" of gun-owning individuals. (The right of)
private gun ownership is a trickle down of the right for citizens to form and operate a Militia.
Think about it, what value is there to a right to be armed is you cannot assemble as a Militia?
The founding fathers were no dummies, and the Amendment was purposefully worded in
that way for that reason. This was to prevent laws from being passed that would restrict
armed citizens from forming a Militia. It even goes further than an individual "right" -- it's a
necessity - something that is absolutely required, not a luxury, for the security of a free State.
Think of it along the same lines as jury duty and things will begin to make better sense.
Please, please do some linguistic work before spouting anti-gun rhetoric.
CAP === 'tyranny'
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:5, Informative)
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country." - James Madison
You can find his words in the annals of Congress [loc.gov]. The 2nd Amendment is a more concise and clear version of what he wrote. It's only when you don't like what it clearly and plainly states (in the vernacular of the time it was written) that it becomes unclear or cloudy. If you're in doubt about what it said - then go back and read what was debated and proffered by the original writers.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice Selective Statistic (Score:3, Insightful)
That's great. Now if we didnt have the highest homicide rate of any first world nation by a very sizeable margin I might think you have a good point. But we do so you don't.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
But looking at statistics per capita is just fine when slagging off America about education, medical care or countless other things.
Hundreds of millions of citizens, hundreds of millions of guns, yet somehow the inanimate object is still held up as the problem. Millions of people living peacefully and owning guns without hurting anyone. I guess if there were no guns, there would be no death right? No stabbing, no bludgeoning, no driving through crowds. We'd be in a peaceful utopia of kindness, right? Like in Europe where nothing bad ever happens, right?
The overwhelming majority of gun deaths in the U.S. are drug/gang related. End the bullshit war on drugs and watch them drop. Next up, suicide. Stop gutting mental health treatment and revolving door committals for at risk people. There you go, massive decrease in gun deaths. That would cost money though. Gotta keep the prison industry rolling. Can't waste money on crazies when we need to fund pork. Easier to distract the masses with "guns bad, history bad, group-think good".
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
>"Ah yes, the infamous, "But when you look at the statistics. . ." bullshit argument."
Statistics are facts. If you don't use facts, then you are arguing irrationally and emotionally.
>"But looking at the number of occurrences and the totality of deaths, the U.S. leads the pack."
Meaningless. Obviously such statistics have to be per capita or they are pretty much of no value. And when you do make it per capita, USA is nowhere near "leading the pack." In fact, in mass shootings, "the USA is 4th behind 3 European countries or eighth when a broader set of non-conflict countries are examined."
http://www.gunfacts.info/wp-co... [gunfacts.info]
http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-c... [gunfacts.info]
Re: (Score:3)
If a country of 6 million people has one mass shooting, of course their numbers will look higher. But looking at the number of occurrences and the totality of deaths, the U.S. leads the pack.
Uh, why would you even want to look at the total number instead of adjusting it per capita? Adjusting it per capita seems like a reasonable thing to do........
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
Europe as a whole has more people than the US yet across the board their numbers are much higher.
You, like so many others, conflate the entirety of Europe with the U.S. when you should be looking at each individual country. However, since you brought it up, this article says there were 19 mass shootings in all of Europe between 2009 and 2015 wherein 319 people were killed (the outlier being the shooting in Norway in which 69 people were killed). That comes out to 20 deaths as the result of mass shootings per year in the entirety of Europe, or just over one death as the result of a mass shooting for each European country per year.
During that same period in the U.S. there were 25 mass shootings with 199 people killed (apparently our shooters need more practice). Snopes laid out [snopes.com] the skewed statistics and why the U.S. ranks far and above Europe in mass shootings.
Since that time, the U.S. continues to pull ahead of Europe in mass shootings. This article [everytownresearch.org] uses 2009- 2016 for their numbers in which they calculated 156 mass shootings with 848 people killed (their methodology is slightly different than above). One thing to note is, according their numbers, only ten percent of mass shootings take place in a "gun free" zone.
As to your other statistics, I said child molestation and rape, not rape as a whole. Big difference. But keep using statistics to justify racism and ignore who the real perpetrators are of certain crimes.
Re: Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
When did Europe start needing "diversity" barriers to protect their Christmas markets? When did London overtake New York City in murders per capita, despite having a gun ban? When did New Year's Eve in Cologne have over a 1,000 women sexually assaulted by gangs of men?
Seems certain people are the problem, not the guns.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
"An armed society is a polite society."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"An armed society is a polite society."
This along the same moronic line of thinking that lead to Google/Facebook/Twitter promoting the idea that if people used their real names, they'd be more civil towards each other. Yeah, that worked out really well.
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
https://slashdot.org/~_Sharp'r_ quoted RAH thusly:
"An armed society is a polite society."
Y'know, I've been a fan of Robert A. Heinlein's literally since I was six years old. I've read all his fiction, and much of his non-fiction, as well (Grumbles from the Grave is pretty darned entertaining, believe it or not). And the thing is that, even when I first read Beyond This Horizon - from whence that quote is taken - at the age of eight or so, I knew enough to take it as a premise for the world RAH built to set that story in, rather than any sort of universal truth.
And that, in turn, is because there is ZERO real-world evidence of that proposition's truth - nor was there any such evidence available to Heinlein when he made that statement. Instead, as a writer of fiction, he set out to explore a world that was based on that proposition, as a source of the conflict his protagonist must resolve to move the book's plot to its resolution.
The inescapable fact is that in the present day, there are quite a few armed societies we can study to provide evidence for or against the truth of RAH's proposition - and, frankly, it doesn't hold water.
Heinlein imagined a world in which a formalized code duello made it possible for people who choose to go armed to fight to the death over insults, but that specifically exempted those who choose not to arm themselves. In that world, challenging, menacing, or targeting anyone who is NOT visible carrying is automatically treated as a felonious criminal act to which all armed bystanders are obligated to respond with deadly force. In the actual, phenomenological world in which real people live, that kind of social firewall just doesn't exist. Live in, say, Afghanistan, or the DRC, or Iraq, or Somalia, or - well, anywhere other than the USA where some significant portion of the local population routinely goes strapped, and another percentage does not, the unarmed ones are simply not, as a rule, routinely provided protection by the civilian folks with guns. (Or by local militias, for that matter.)
Instead, the armed population essentially does as it pleases, and the unarmed ones keep their heads down and their mouths shut - from fear for their lives, and the lives of their loved ones, against whom retaliation is to be expected, for those who are foolish enough to make themselves targets by, for example, standing up to armed teenage bullies, professional predators, or adherents of a different belief system than those locals who go armed.
The same was true of the American West in the 19th century. That's why one of the first institutions that arose in any newly-settled area was formally-constituted and empowered law enforcement: local constables, county sheriffs, U.S. marshalls, Texas Rangers, and so on.
In point of fact, all the evidence is that an armed, non-fictional society is a polite one only when its armed members are forced by laws and law enforcement personnnel to behave themselves. Because people - and especially young men - are, by default, basically assholes when they suddenly acquire the means to impose their will on others with impunity.
It has nothing whatever to do with self-defense. It's about self-aggrandizement, and the addictive pleasure of forcing others to bend to your will. Everything else - everything - is post hoc rationalization.
Note that I'm not talking about rural folks who use firearms to control the local varmint population, nor am I talking about those who use guns to hunt for food, or strictly for target shooting. I'm talking here about urban and suburban Americans who fetishize gun ownership and fantasize that they are somehow capable of effectively resisting government authorities, should they feel the need to revolt against authority - despite the fact that small arms are essentially worthless against trained military personnel armed with everything from satellite-directed drones to B1 bombers to tanks to RPGs and ...
You get the p
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I stopped reading when you started painting your rhetoric opposition as crybabies.
Do you expect to be taken seriously when you are unable to actually deal with some arguments your opposition has?
Now I'll be the first to admit that the pro-gun side has a lot of idiots and mind, I'd rather they didn't have guns either. Frankly, half the NRA shouldn't have guns. However, that is my personal opinion which is not valid enough to base legislation on, especially considering I'm not even American.
The fact remains, though, that there are enough statistics that show that the availability of guns alone isn't the factor that determines violent crime. Any halfway sane person, at that point, should go "Well, gee, perhaps there are other issues as well?"
Let's say America creates a prohibition on guns (I'm not even going to go into how bad America is at handling prohibitions...). What do you expect will happen? Violent crime using guns MAY go down. Abuse of legally owned guns will vanish, sure, because there won't be any more legal guns.
Do you think there will be fewer robberies or murders? How well does it work out for countries like Great Britain?
If you have a high rate of fucked up people in your country, you don't need to idiot proof the world. You need to take a long, hard look at yourself and admit that you, as a society, are doing something terribly wrong. Your rate of incarceration is astoundingly high while your crime rates are puttering on along the same lines as those of most other countries that don't have such draconian laws.
Maybe start there before you go paint tens or even hundred's of thousands of law abiding citizens as potential murderers? It would have the advantage of bringing tangible benefit to all of society, too, even if you don't care about ever owning a gun yourself.
Or are you actually trying to get fifty percent incarceration rates? Is there some kind of competition you're trying to win?
I just can't understand how it's somehow more worthwhile to take something away from good people that they love instead of making sure you have a populace you can trust with those things. The latter may be harder but in the long run would have so many positive effects on all aspects of life I don't even know where to begin listing them.
Re:Seriously, America. (Score:4, Insightful)
Again, I'd be interested to know why you think mandatory service is terrible. I think more than a few of our current problems and wars stem from its absence.
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Besides, who's going to pay the cost of training them, housing them and feeding them? You?
Re: Thoughts and prayers are needed (Score:5, Insightful)
It also doesn't align with common sense, but God saw it fit to leave that out of some individuals as well.
Re: Thoughts and prayers are needed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
A room full of armed people trying to locate a shooter and stop them... They would be mistaking each other for the killer, missing and hitting bystanders. I really doubt it would have made things better.
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it would be a long drawn out solution but it would most certainly work in the end. Most guns not voluntarily turned in would turn up for police over time. Australia is a real world example of a country which relatively recently highly restricted gun ownership to a high degree of success.
In the short term it's possible it might hurt but it's stupid to keep doing something stupid because the solution would hurt for a while.
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Because you're comparing a third world country to a first. It's practically a sociological fact that high poverty or wealth inequality breeds crime. This is why you never hear a reasonable person making the comparison you are trying to make here.
Re:come and take them. please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gun culture is sick culture.
My father attended grade school in rural Maryland in the 1950's. The boys in his class brought their rifles to school in the morning so that they could hunt squirrels on the walk home from school. That was typical in rural America during that era. Fathers judged when boys were mature enough to handle a gun and taught them gun safety and shooting skills. Hunting and shooting were social and communal. There were very few fatalities [wikipedia.org] from rural grade school shootings in the decade of the 1950's, despite the common practice of allowing students to bring guns to schools. Some schools had shooting clubs. Rural American was safe because it had a healthy gun culture.
Gun culture is about advocating and practicing responsibility and safety. Can you name any mass shooting carried out by an NRA class instructor or a competitive shooter? Are the U.S. Olympic shooting teams "sick?" What about those in the armed forces? Someone is willing to risk his life at war for his country and you describe his affinity for the weapons used to perform his job as "sick?"
Study the biographies of those who commit mass shootings. They are not part of gun culture, but usually loners with histories of anti-social behavior.
Where do members of gun culture congregate? At shooting ranges. If gun culture is sick, then where are the mass shootings at ranges? [quora.com]?
Re:come and take them. please. (Score:4, Insightful)
Good point. It would be better to a respectful period of time - say until the pain of loss has faded - to realize you therefore no longer have emotional motivation to fix the problem.
Yeah, why would we want to take a level headed approach when we can just legislate from the hip on emotional appeal. We're guaranteed to have a great democracy that way
Re:come and take them. please. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah because the real problem here isn't the psychopathic asshole that wanted to hurt people just because he lost a videogame, its really all the fault of the tool he used.
And making something illegal has already been proven to work so well to get rid of it. That's why America doesn't have a drug problem any more. Oh wait.
Besides, wasn't the event already a gun-free zone? Maybe if more people were carrying he wouldn't have been so quick to go on a rampage in the first place, or they could at least have defended themselves and ended it quicker.
You liberal morons make me laugh. You spent the last year and a half comparing Trump to Hitler at the same time you're begging him to take everyones guns away.
Right back at ya (Score:5, Interesting)
"Yeah because the real problem here isn't the psychopathic asshole that wanted to hurt people just because he lost a videogame, its really all the fault of the tool he used.
And making something illegal has already been proven to work so well to get rid of it."
First world countries with stricter gun control laws then us universally have homicide rates 4-5 times less than ours ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) so yes, in this case limiting the tool does seem to do an awful lot of good.
You conservative morons make me laugh. You refuse to look at real life things that work extremely well in almost every other first world nation like gun control or socialized medicine (as a country we pay twice or more percapita for our health care relative to any other country with socialized medicine) because it disagrees with your ideology.
Re:Right back at ya (Score:4)
Re: Right back at ya (Score:3)
Re:come and take them. please. (Score:5, Interesting)
Says the leftist troll that he himself started out with a statement stranding on the still warm bodes of the victims.
Troll? No, friend. I honestly believe that increased gun regulation is sane. I'm not saying that to trigger you or anyone else. Further, I'm not standing on any bodies, warm or otherwise. I'm disregarding the regretful - but irrelevant bodies you're referencing. The only way they matter is that they should make you feel that something is wrong, and to seek ways to fix it.
You are a perfect example of why I show abso-fucking-lutely zero respect for your kind.
What precisely is "my" kind? Rational people? People who aren't inclined to support the status-quo that isn't working? Just curious.
What in your diseased mind makes you think you deserve a respect when you started off with a generalized attack on an entire class of people?
What class of people am I attacking? Pro-gun supporters? Look, I'll admit I do think that group are wrong, and fatally so. But I'm not attacking them. I'm encouraging them to get off their asses, and change their minds. To save lives. But in your narrative, I'm the bad guy. You know nobody's buying that, right?
The answer is is that you don't deserve it, and you will never receive it.
But more to a more cogent point: well the problem with your non-argument is that there is no real problem, not in the way assholes like you think there is. Mass shootings like this are so statistical rare as to be a non-issue. Yeah, they're terrible, but so are shark bites, Ebola, and Islamic attacks. If you lump every single death where a gun is involved you'll get about 30K a year, and if you just look at homicides you're only going to about 10K. All of these are terrible but they're a drop in the bucket compared to the 2.5 million people that will die every year from all causes. And even more to the point while 30K people might die with guns the best data we have from the federal government itself shows that roughly 300K people will use a gun in self defense every damn year.
If you think I need to 'fix my shit' maybe you should educate yourself and learn about the reality of guns in America before you start beakin' off, lest you look like a retard in a public form.
You know, aside from the abrasive, antisocial, combative, ignorant, rude, angry, dismissive, condescending things you wrote, there were also a few words. At great effort, I have located them and admit that deep in there you've got a point. It's a great point, much better than the One Handgun Per Child plan that seems be your vision for a safe country. That point seems to be: the American education system is broken.
Let's see. Three hundred thousand people - per year - use a gun to "defend" themselves each year. That's one in every thousand citizens. Given that some Americans are children (let's imagine the age distribution is even up to 100 years old, which it's not), we can disregard say... 15% of your citizens. Given that some Americans are either elderly or disabled, we can probably chalk up another 15% to ignore. Then, let's estimate that maybe half of the remaining adults have guns, we arrive at 35% of your country being able to be included in your federal statistic. What just happened there is that we used reason, to come to the recognition that supposedly, one in three hundred gun-owners needs to "defend" himself every year.
I ask you... what the actual fuck?
See, in those countries other than America, where we lack guns to protect ourselves, if one in three hundred of us needs to "defend" ourselves every year, we'd be dead by now. Or homeless because all our stuff was stolen. But it doesn't work that way. The threat isn't present for us. The need-to-defend isn't present.
So hey, I'd suggest you revisit your own arguments in the light that they're just... macho bullshit, and - again - go out and actually protect some people by advocating sanity, not pro-gun culture.
Re:come and take them. please. (Score:4, Interesting)
I Say this as a Brit myself:
When I see British citizens mocking the USA I just remember that in 100 years or so, we went from ruling 25% of the world to living on an island the size of Michigan. I've never been more happy that 15 years ago I decided to emigrate to the USA. I look at the pussy liberal culture in the UK that was emerging even then and see how it has now driven the entire country into the ground and made everyone scared to even admit to having testicles. The entire country has totally become a handout culture, and now the peecee agenda is enabling a mass of immigrants to turn into an Islamic state. If that's your idea of a "civilized" country you can stick it.
Re:come and take them. please. (Score:4, Insightful)
See, in those countries other than America, where we lack guns to protect ourselves, if one in three hundred of us needs to "defend" ourselves every year, we'd be dead by now. Or homeless because all our stuff was stolen. But it doesn't work that way. The threat isn't present for us. The need-to-defend isn't present.
Because other first world countries are bigger on the concept of social safety nets for people who fall on hard times. Here in America, we have this prevailing conservative attitude that if you can't pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you should just starve to death.
Problem is, these people aren't content to sit in a gutter and slowly starve - instead, they turn to crime. Consequently, people with guns end up having to defend themselves from them.
Bigger problem is, to sell "fixing" this to the American public, you'd have to tell them you're going to take some of their money and give it to deadbeats (you're not going to be able to shake that stigma), and they'll have to give up their guns too. That's why it's a tough sell.
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From a personal standpoint I am so happy I don't live in the US. There is a definite liberating sense of freedom and peace to live in a society where the thought of needing to lethally protect myself never crosses my mind (as practically no-one else has a gun).
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but you alt-right nutjobs
And yet, as seen in the killer's reddit posts, he's yet another angrily irrational left-leaning person who hated anyone who voted for Trump. Just another alt-righter, right? Gotcha.
Sort of like it was an "alt-right" but never the less Bernie Sanders fan boy that decided to go and try to kill a bunch of Republican congress members? Is that how it works?
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In Europe, maybe. Not in the US. Everything's bigger there.